Palm under HP Reimburses Submission Fees to webOS App Developers

This entry was posted on July 5, 2010 by Pure Mobile.

E-mails have been sent out by Unlocked Palm Pre to the webOS developer community intimating them of Palm's intention of a waiver for the $50 per application submission fee that is required to get on the apps catalog. Moreover, Palm has also said that all current developers are eligible for a refund of their fees submitted previously.

After its takeover, LogicHP considers Palm and webOS to be “A great source of mobile fun, its not all sunshine and rainbows”. The number of apps in the webOS store has leveled out at around 2,600 for quite a while. The rather stiff $50 submission fee was also a substantial deterrent to coders who might have been interested in developing apps for the PalmOS platform.

By following the present policy, Palm would have to pay over $100,000. This is not really that hefty a sum, considering its acquisition by HP. Moreover, in a market dominated by the likes of the iPhone 4 unlocked Handset and Android operating systems for mobile phones, this may seem like a sensible investment to boost the interest of developers and coders thus giving a shot in the arm to application development for the PalmOS platform. And the App Catalog could definitely use the extra apps that may be coming due to developers homing in on this "too-good-to-be-true" opportunity.

This is a rather unusual move to entice developers by Palm. Earlier they had waived the submission fee and reviewing process for open-source apps. The present move may also be a desperate attempt to increase sales of its smartphones - the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.

There are several disadvantages to this as well. This literal opening of doors may result in spam, bug-prone apps, loss in robustness integrity of code due to an unrestricted submission policy and a lack of quality control.